Just a quick blog before work. Quick, though, ‘cuz I got shit to do.

I promised myself I’d not blog about the election too much because–most of the time–I hate political blogs. I like political conversations, but blogs just seem to incite rude-o screaming matches in the comments section. People write things that they’d never say and everyone just ends up sounding stupid. I can invite people over to potluck to brainstorm ways to change the world; but if I started political discussions online, any old jackass can chime in. Ultimately, I didn’t want to write about the election because I don’t need another stress and I found that political blogging isn’t a fun or productive spend of my time. In fact, it mostly makes me angry and there is enough media in the world to do that already. I promised to take my political activities elsewhere, strictly offline. But I’m breakfasting to NPR and just heard something that’s instigated me into political blogging.

First, I can’t tell you how ANNOYED I am that America is just catching on that feminism is a political issue. I am also furious that Sara Palin has somehow become our spokesperson for this, twisting the feminist message to mean something along the lines of “women–even though they are stupid and without credentials–deserve the same opportunities as men.” Makes me sick. How Hilary has contained herself from public teeth knashing, I’ll never know.

But what REALLY got under my skin was the NPR report that said that both parties were trying to woo women by doing the following:
1.) Visiting beauty parlors (Obama ‘s plans for this weekend)
2.) Cooking ribs with Rachel Ray (McCain)
3.) Plastering the Oprah Winfrey Show with ads (which both parties are crazy about).

Because if there is anything we know about women its that they really like to get their hair done, cook, and watch daytime television. So I guess I just won’t be wooed because, like most women I know, I’ve got to get my ass to work. I’ve got 8 miles to bike to get there and a department to run once I arrive. Its my husband’s turn to cook dinner tonight and I’ll be reading Gravity’s Rainbow this evening instead of watching re-runs of Oprah.

A note to Obama and McCain: you’ve got us ladies all wrong. It’s 2008. Just like our friends with penises, we’ve got shit to do.

Edit: I was a hellbeast of rage biking to work this morning. I thought a blog would purge me of my policital anger, but turns out: it was just the warm up.

You want to woo me? Here’s what my vagina and I want:

1.) Equal pay for equal work

2.) Equal opportunities for educational/professional development, scholarship,
business loans, and promotions

3.) A choice as to what is and is not permitted to attach itself to my uterine
lining

4.) An economy where single-income families can survive. If my husband needs to
take time off of his career to tend to an ailing parent or friend, see our
child through toddlerhood, or go to effing graduate school: I need to feel
confident that I can support us. He wants the same for me. We want the same for
our gay friends.

5.) Job security when/if I take maternity leave, which ideally: is 6 months
paid, with a 6 months unpaid option. Think this is crazy? Check in with what
the rest of the world is doing and get back to me.

6.) Government protected “flex time” to tit-feed my child and later, send
them off to school. This is not a wild notion; we are one of the only
“developed” countries not doing it.

7.) Both parties keep
trying to “play nice” with each other and say, “we
can all agree that fewer abortions would be nice.” So its adoption, yeah?
I want government protection for gay marriage and adoption. Newsflash: men can’t make babies with other men. But they can make wonderful
fathers together. Same for queer mammas. So let’s protect their families, for
christsakes!

8.) An end to abstinence-only education. This is a joke. Except its not funny
because it breeds babies and STDs. Is sexuality so far removed from everyone’s
lives that they have completely forgotten how old they were when they lost
their virginity? On average, its 16 for us ladies; 17 for guys. Most people I
know, including myself, fall into that category. There’s a lot about the world
that 16 and 17 year olds don’t know. That’s why they go to school. Let’s teach
them the reproductive biology of mammals, shall we? Let’s teach them how to
take care of their reproductive health in a way that is realistic,
comprehensive, sex-positive, and helpful.

9.) An environmental policy that makes certain the future generation won’t
inherit a toxic wasteland. Also: I want an environmental policy that makes sure
that I actually can reproduce! I know an alarming number of twenty-something
women with reproductive problems that I have a hard time thinking are unrelated
to the hormones in our food, the pervasive number of plastics in our
environment, bleach in our tampons, and other toxins in our environments.

10.) Access to public healthcare. Did you know that birth control is free in
most other “developed” nations? You wanted fewer abortions, didn’t
you?

Finally, I want many, many things that my breasts and ovaries have nothing to do with! I want a competent leader who will stop embarrassing me
with things like a fence across the Mexican boarder. I want us to get the fuck
out of this war and an to end
to the horror show that is Guantanamo.
(Is it so much that my president respect habeas corpus?!?)
I want regulation. I want a real-world switch from globalization to local
economies. I want a reform to the farm subsidies program. I want public transit
to become a viable option for Americans again. I want equal distribution of
taxes for public education. I want an America with a healthy middle
class. I want politicians who understand that I read newspapers, I listen to
the radio, I have opinions that weren’t even engineered by Oprah. You want to
woo me? Understand that and respect it.

Last week, Shaun and I started having Thursday Night Recession Potluck at our house. Every Thursday evening, our doors are open to all of our city friends/aquantnces we’d like to be friendlier with. People don’t have to come every week, just when they feel like it–when the week suits, we’ll be open for business. Potluck is a very casual, totally low pressure evening of shared plates, drinkies, and conversation and was born out of a few ideas:

1.) Bringing Scotland to ‘Merica
Potluck allows us to open our hearts and home in the way that is a true reflection of how we feel for our friends and all the beautiful people that we enjoy. For what good is thinking “you know–that person is really cool.”? One must act! Show that person! Scotland taught us that. Scotland is full of that. In my experience (Shaun’s too), Scottish society hinges on it. America needs more of it.

2.) Breaking A Bad Habit
My favorite things include: biking, running, swimming, reading, writing. Alone-type things. Shaun is similarly solitary. But we are humans! We need people! We love people! Its just easy for us to fall into a habitual hermit-type life. Potluck offers a built-in safe-guard against seclusion. We need to get out of ourselves. Communities nourish people, if we let them.

3.) Going out = Money. We Don’t Have Any.
We live well, but not well enough to spend much money on socialization. If we’re all going out to the pub or to a restaurant to enjoy each-others company, lets just skip the price mark ups and gather ’round  my kitchen table. This week, I made a summer vegetable soup to feed an army for about $12. Plus, the case of PBR we’ve started to keep on hand for those interested in sucking down a cheap beer or two over the course of the evening. We’ve still got loads of both left over. See? Economical.

4.) Urban Living = Isolation
Cities are filled with young people, away from the family and friends of home. Its hard to make friends as a grown up. Especially in a culture that emphasizes work, work, work. You’re at work so much that you rarely meet people outside of work. And even when you like the people that you work with, after you’ve just spent 8 hours with them, do you really want to grab dinner together and unwind over the weekends? Sometimes you do, but its nice to make your bubble bigger, more diverse. Its great to keep the conversation fresh, the ideas new and percolating. It feels good to introduce people to new friends. And since people in cities tend to relocate at an astonishing rate (myself included), its nice to have as big of a support system as possible. I think it just might help people calm down and stick around for a while. Or at very least, allow social groups to replenish.

5.) Sharing Ideas = Changing the World
Okay. So far, we’ve not figured out how to stop Sarah Palin’s horror show or how to end our addiction to oil. But we just might get there. The voicing of opinions with our actual voices–not through blogs or texts or even articles/essays–feels so good. And changes things–it changes us a little bit. Plus, it just plain feels good.

So far, both Potlucks have been really fun. It looks like Potluck has a dedicated little group of 4-5 ladies and Shaun. Every week holds new potential, new ideas, and something positive and pure. It makes me happy and is really easy. I made sure to indicate in the invite that things would be really casual, so aside from wiping off the table, making a big batch of something to eat, and running the dishwasher, the night runs itself. I’d recommend them to anyone. We’re not alone in this world. Our iPods just make it seem that way sometimes.
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How do you foster new friendships? What are your thoughts on the role of friendships in adult life?

While my last entry focused on this summer’s crappiest read, there are so many good things that I’ve read this summer that are deserving of blog attention. Lets take a look at these finer things, shall we?

McSweeney’s (issue 28)
Edited by Dave Eggers
Most of the time, I think this lit rag is annoying. I like how fancy it looks–McSweeney’s is the AIGA’s little darling, after-all–but overall the publication’s editorial courtship of smarty-pants hipsters who’d rather choke on irony than say anything sentimental just irritates me.

Regardless, I subscribe to McSweeney’s because I’m interested to see how Eggers and his crew are contributing to the fun literary movement we’ve presently got dancing underfoot. Plus, each issue of McSweeney’s is different from the next in terms of design and editorial focus, meaning that there’s always a chance that it could get better. And in issue 28, better it got.

Eight little books all puzzled together to create two large and beautiful illustrations, issue 28′s focus is on the fable; contemporary authors weave modern-day versions of tall tales. “The Box” summed up the day’s headlines. “The Guy Who Kept Meeting Himself” stopped my heart for a minute. “The Book and the Girl” made me cry. I read each fable, one right after the other, and found fresh joy in each. I was reminded that fables introduce dubious plots that oftentimes make little sense until the last line is delivered. Best of all, I discovered that no matter how old you are when you read a fable, it is still perfectly acceptable for animals to talk.

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenter
By J.D. Salinger
Okay. I admit it. It wasn’t until I went to see a band with the same name that I remembered: “Hey! That’s a Salinger book I’ve been meaning to read!” I liked the band a great deal and so I thought I’d probably like the book.

I underestimated things here. I loved the book. It is hilarious.

In this short novella, Buddy is a spectacularly insecure soldier who takes a short leave of duty to represent his family at his brother Seymour’s wedding. Only dear Seymour, given to bouts of debilitating introspection, has decided to stand his bride up at the alter, unannounced. Motivated by immaturity and sheer social retardation, Buddy finds himself crammed into a boiling hot car with the bride’s aunt, the matron of honor and her husband, and a deaf and dumb old man in a top hat. En-route to an anti-celebration at the home of the mother of the bride, the group is stalled when an annoyingly jubilant parade blocks the way. Social niceties soon flake away to bickering and prodding. Buddy squirms in his seat, forced to figure out where he stands, who is is, and how much he is willing to take.

Armageddon in Retrospect
by Kurt Vonnegut

For as much sorrow as I felt when Vonnegut passed away last year, this collection reminded me of just how lucky I am to have had my life-span overlap with his for a brief period of time. He makes me laugh, he makes me cry, he reminds me of how sacred this thing called life is. And I think he made a lot of other people feel these things too. And I got to share a world with them. So he did a lot more than write books, Vonnegut did. He changed attitudes. Armageddon in Retrospect‘s twelve writings on war and peace do nothing less.

Other goodies ‘o’ the summer…
You Must Be This Happy to Enter
by Elizabeth Crane
I give it five out of five arbitrary gold stars. Just read it. It’s too fun to review. Zombies. Reality tv. Lots of exclamation points. Excellent!!!!!!!!

Sweetness in the Belly
by Camilla Gibb
I give it three out of five arbitrary gold stars. But this book has been translated into a billion languages and has won loads of awards, so I think I’m the only one whose been this stingy with the star-giving on this book.

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
by Haruki Murakami
I give it three out of five arbitrary gold stars. When he’s not writing international best sellers, Mr. Murakami is a distance runner! Who knew?! Loved all the talk about running, but not sure if non-runners are going to like this. Although, my husband said he understood me better after reading it, so I think that says something.

Currently Reading…
Currently, I’m making my way through Gravity’s Rainbow by Mister Thomas Pynchon. It’s a big book that requires a lot of attention, so it may take a while. But so far, at page 50: I’m laughing my ass off.

My favorite character so far is Pirate, the army captain with the rooftop banana patch who forces himself to ignore whatever catastrophic air raids are happening out of doors to make his squadron a homemade banana breakfast. Banana waffles, banana frappes, banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed banana “mold in the shape of a British lion rampant,” banana french toast,banana oatmeal, banana kreplach: seriously, any and all things banana are to be had at this breakfast.

I also laughed out loud like a madwoman at a scene where a group of lab-workers are trying to dognap a pooch living in the rubble of a bombed-out apartment complex. The captain of the operation steps into a cast-off toilet and is unable to extract his foot. So he hobbles through the scene trying to net a dog with one leg as a toilet.

Aside from being hysterical, so far I’ve found Gravity’s Rainbow to be truly beautiful. I’ve had to slow down the pace at which I usually read for this book, as the sentence structure is long and winding and never easy to anticipate. But not always. Here is a sample of simple, plain-faced writing that I read and re-read just for the thrill of it:

“There’s never much talk but touches and looks, smiles together, curses for parting. It is marginal, hungry, chilly–most times they’re too paranoid to risk a fire–but it’s something they want to keep, so much that to keep it they will take on more than propaganda has ever asked them for. They are in love. Fuck the war.”

Looking forward to…
Tales of Moonlight and Rain
by Ueda Akinari
First published in 1776, the nine gothic tales in this book are Japan’s finest examples of occult literature. I hope to be done with Gravity’s Rainbow by Halloween so that this can be my spooky-time read.

Orkneyinga Saga
author unknown
Written around the year 1200, Orkneyinga Saga is a viking myth ripe with battle, murder and sorcery.

I
by Stephen Dixon
This author is championed by the McSweeney’s crowd and so I’m not sure that I’m going to love him. Sometimes I adore the McSweeney’s darlings; sometimes I abhor them. But I’m always curious. This one is about a man raising his daughter while caring for his wife, victim of a debilitating disease. Sounds like a horrible thing to read in the midst of a gray, Chicago November (this is, I’m guessing, when I’ll get around to it)! But the book jacket promises that the story is told with “Dixon’s trademark honesty, lucidity, and expansive humor” so I’m hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

Lanark: A Life in 4 Books
by Alasdair Gray
Mister Gray is a cornerstone of Glasgow life. He is also a famous author. I’ve read a handful of his short stories and they never cease to make me smile.

Granta
Issue 102–The New Nature Writing
I’m behind on my Granta reading. And I’ll probably be even more behind by the time I get to 102. Unlike McSweeney’s, I love Granta cover to cover, issue to issue. I’ve not yet been disappointed.
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What are some of the finer things you read this summer? What books are you looking forward to?

© Truly
  
    The first book in Stephenie Meyer’s four part Twilight Saga, Twilight, is detrimental to the young readers it was written for and not because it’s coursing with the raw lust and haunting darkness you might expect uptight parents to tisk about. In fact, some readers (okay, me) may be disapointed in how chaste and cheerful this vampire romance actually is. The real reason that Twilight is damaging is because 320 of its 498 pages are prime examples of truly bad writing. Worse still, Meyer has taken a perfectly good opportunity to create a strong female protagonist and squandered it on the same old damsel in distress scenario that gives most vampire stories–Buffy excluded here–their bad rap with us feminists.

    The book begins with Bella–a clumsy and brainy high school junior who’s just moved from Phoenix to Forks in upstate Washington. Bella is none to thrilled with the move, self-imposed as it was; she decided to live with her dad when it became apparent that her mother would rather travel with her new baseball player husband than tend to parenting duties in Phoenix.

    To her credit, Meyer does a fine job of creating Bella’s world in the first quarter of the novel. The reader lumbers along foggy mountain roads with Bella in her red, vintage Ford truck. They watch the lush and gloomy town unfold before them, between swipes of the windshield wipers. Readers follow Bella from class to class, they feel her social anxiety and are pleasantly surprised to find themselves cooking with Bella–an unlikely but not totally unbelievable hobby for a seventeen year old in the new millennium.

    Bella soon meets the Cullens, a family chock full of untouchably beautiful and mysterious teens, never seen in direct sunlight. Even though he is inexplicably rude and moodier than a tranny in undersized tights, Bella’s pick of the litter is Edward. Wildly attractive, one laughably bad simile describes Edward as “looking like a male model in an advertisement for raincoats” (pg 358). Bella’s infatuation with Edward reaches near manic proportion when when he saves her from a fatal car accident by catching a mini-van in his bare hands. After getting the inside scoop about the Cullens from a Native American friend–because who better qualified in the land of gross cliches to dispense information about the supernatural than the First Peoples–Bella begins to suspect Edward is more than just your average teenage heart throb.

    If Bella’s story unfolded as that of a smart, daring sleuth on a quest for answers, I’d be a satisfied customer. But Meyer ruins things by breaking every rule of the second act: she gives the protagonist what she wants. Edward soon confesses his undying love for Bella and, in cuddly conversation, details all the stipulations of his family’s vampire life. Is it any wonder that young writers struggle with the Comp 101 basic “show, don’t tell” when this is the crap they’re reading? Also, once you give your leading lady what she wants–what story is there left to tell?

    If Bella was forced to really work for her information, two key things would be at stake for her, propelling the story into the third act and beyond:

    When Edward comes traipsing out of the vampire closet at the start of the second act, that’s the end of Bella’s journey. Nothing else feels risky. Sure, a pack of roving vamps crash Forks and one stalks her and threatens her family. But she’s got Edward’s constant reassurance that he will keep her and her family safe. And since Meyer spent so much time building up the Cullens’ infallibility, we believe him. And it’s boring.

    Meyer even goes so far as to have her character penned up in a hotel room for a good sixty pages, baby-sat by friendly vampires while her beloved is in the thick of the action, protecting her dad from the bad vamps. In a post-Buffy world, I don’t understand how teenage girls can find this type of leading lady truly engaging. Even Buffy–born into her role as action-adventure slayer–seems tame compared to her successor Veronica Mars, the teenage sleuth detective who chose her life as a heroic figure and loves every minute of it. With trail blazers like these, Meyer’s expectation that readers will engage with a protagonist who waits around all day with chaperones is absurd.
   
    The only thing that is a real point of tension after Edward fesses up to being a blood sucker is the question: what is Bella willing to risk to be with him? Although he loves her, Edward is constantly struggling with his desire to bite Bella. Every time the two even get close to anything resembling a make-out session, Edward pulls back and struggles with the vampire equivalent to blue balls. Chaste as it may be, Edward’s turmoil is more than a little reminiscent of the glorified rape scenarios of yesteryear’s Dracula.

    Dependent on the idea that beneath even the most refined gentleman lies a violent predator who is ready to “turn” on their dates at any given moment, Dracula is paradoxically passionate. His prey always dies shuddering in extacy. The subtext: women want to be hurt and men–with their untamable desires–can’t help but to inflict that hurt.

    Buffy the Vampire Slayer took the notion of Dracula and dismantled it bit by misogynistic bit. During the course of seven seasons, Buffy Summers did the nasty with her fair share of vamps–and she was kinky to boot. Ms. Summers got off on the idea that death was literally breathing down her neck, but there was no denying that she was just as aroused by the knowledge that she was an equal in her sexcapades. The vamp could kill her, sure. But not before she killed him.

     Twilight blissfully ignores the feminist course that Buffy paved the way for; Meyer even seems to have gone out of her way to create a wimpy protagonist. Not only is Bella unequipped to defend herself against Edward should he try to get fresh with her plasma, but she seems totally incapable of real-world survival. She is clumsy, suffers fainting spells, and gets failing grades for street smarts. In one scene she tries to research vampires by typing the word into Google. Honestly, Bella? Now I don’t even think you’re that smart anymore, which was the one thing you had going for you.

    After spending a weekend canoodling with the undead, Bella wants nothing more than for Edward to turn her into a vampire. Regardless of what Edward does with this knowledge, the reader’s last question is answered. What is Bella willing to give up to be with Edward? Sadly: her life.

    What makes the literary and feminist regression of Twilight all the more depressing is its success. The back of my paperback edition declares Twilight as a “New York Times Editor’s Choice” and “An Amazon ‘Best Book of the Decade.” Twilight the movie is scheduled for a November release.

    I picked up Twilight after seeing more than a few teenage girls devouring it on the bus, on the subway, in the park. It made me happy to see so many young girls churning their way through this book with such appetite. Now it just worries me.